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AngolaThree

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Everything posted by AngolaThree

  1. "For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."-Jonathan Swift Cursed with illegitimate rule, your mandate has fallen. Prepare for the worst to befall you.
  2. I support nonsense, particularly nonsense involving cheesy monsters. Voted 5.
  3. [center][size="6"][font="Book Antiqua"][i][b]Join Techno[/b][/i][/font][/size][/center] [center] [img]http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz343/eGavik/tuflagdarker-1.jpg[/img][/center] Hello hello, how are you all? Pleased to meet you all, I am AngolaThree (ingame name Isis IV), Secretary of the Bureau of Voice for the Technocratic Union. We go by TU formally, but our IRC tags and channel is #techno. You can find us at http://union-rising.net/ with our spiffy Bros-made SMF forums that we can barely run because we have no sense of technology. We're getting better though. Our Eight Principles of Union that guide our behavior: [quote]I, as a member of the Technocratic Union, will... 1. Refrain from unprovoked warfare with other nations. 2. Give generously to those nations less fortunate than myself. 3. Conduct myself in the public sphere in good faith and lead by example. 4. Not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. 5. Treat other alliances as brothers, not foes. 6. Treat my fellow alliance states as co-equal partners in this Union. 7. Defend the honor of this Union from slander and invasion. 8. Never give up, never retreat, or back down from a fair fight.[/quote]
  4. [font="Book Antiqua"][i][center][b]The Call of the Void[/b] Before the grandest idol, the penitent man kneels His hope pouring Libations to oblivion For what sin can iron mask cure? Stoic, it sits unblinking Cycle and cycle The penitent man to dust Another man takes his place Kneeling in grand primordial ritual Stiff and unthinking The penitent men see themselves Idols in idols' reflection[/center][/i][/font] EDIT: May change what I put here, but this is my best work I think.
  5. "Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information." -Edward R. Murrow Good show, CoJ and S.
  6. Good point. Anyone who has any sort of judicial system (formal or informal, i.e a tribunal of ministers versus actual judges), I'd like your input on what those systems were like to construct and work within as well.
  7. In regards to professor approval, yes, he did approve the topic.
  8. I've already had to use usernames for citing IRC logs, which is awkward when they have unusual names like Ayatollah Bromeini. First spam is so two years ago. revisions done, democracy again edited for clarity and referencing data, paragraph added explaining player motivations and demographics (will get more into detail later).
  9. While I respect that Savage, I don't think that holds true. CN isn't that fundamentally complicated. It's a nation simulation game- anyone who's done a simulation (and my professor runs simulations all the time as part of his classes) has an understanding of it- it's just on the Internet, and has some other quibbles. This is about government, CN being secondary. CN is only explained when it must be, otherwise it's about, fundamentally, the decisioninmaking process of individuals in simulations like CN.
  10. The number of case studies probably can be cut- I'm sort of stuck between the page limits here (less than ten, more than five) and wanting to flesh it out into something larger. I agree that GPA is probably superfluous to my main point, so I'll skip over them and mention neutrality elsewhere as a parlay. Arturus, good point. Representative democracy is sort of the current norm, so it's definitely not supported by hard data to say that autocracy is magically better. I don't know what smaller alliances pan out to be- that may be a bit more digging than I want to do for a five to ten page paper with the expectations involved here. Vladimir, you're right, it's not nearly in depth enough, but it is a very rough draft and missing the depth of interviews and other sources. I wanted something out there so people could see my main points and critique them, so I wasn't being disengenous or making factual CN errors (I am far from a CN historian after all).
  11. [quote name='Kalasin' timestamp='1303087432' post='2692142'] I suggest interviewing the ODN. They are one of CN's few democracies, but have appointed ministers unlike us in GATO. I personally think their system is better, heh. (having been in the ODN for over a year before I joined GATO.) MCXA is not a good example of a functioning democracy, or at least it wasn't in my time as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Even today it's not considered a good alliance. I would suggest AngolaThree tracks down the Zhadum logs of 2009, which reveal NPO's inner workings better than anything you'd get from an IO today. Zhadum was an IO who fell out with NPO's leadership and was removed from his IO position, before he left the alliance and provided a wealth of information on NPO's inner workings on a variety of channels in IRC (primarily in #mushroom if memory serves correctly.) [this doesn't put him in a good light, but if I said anything beyond that I wouldn't be being objective. For the record, while I didn't have complete knowledge of what happened between Zha and NPO, I actually believe Zha's account of things and wasn't entirely happy with the way NPO treated him. People think he was a dick but I actually liked Zha D:] [/quote] Good point about MCXA- I just picked them off the top of my head because I was a vet and they seemed familiar. In retrospect that's bad acadaemia to do that, so I'll look for another council-style system. Tracked down the Zhadum logs, remember them from long ago but had recently forgotten. Good stuff! Thanks.
  12. Yeah, I think the next draft will have a split between 1) defining my terms better and 2) getting rid of terms that aren't needed. I wrote this late last night and it was easiest to just write it as clearly as possible to myself, rather than to an audience. I think the second paragraph has a more balanced flavor now- getting a GATO interview will also help even out bias. I'm not trying to be pro-autocrat (though given that hegemons haven't been democratic in a loooong time, it's hard to avoid the view), but I do need an argument of some sort.
  13. [quote name='Delta1212' timestamp='1303075405' post='2692073'] Do you just want feedback on the content or will you accept help with cleaning up some of the writing? Also, just so far in terms of what I've read, I'd challenge the common wisdom that democracies don't work in CN. That's a holdover from the WUT period where the vast majority of democratic alliances legitimately sucked and had little if any organization in comparison to the more autocratic alliances. These days, most successful alliances have some level of organizational bureaucracy regardless of government type, and even the middling alliances are far more effective than even many of the foremost alliances from the period where this idea was birthed. [/quote] Content feedback is mostly appreciated, as it's a rough draft most of the writing hasn't even been looked at seriously and will end up changed. I don't think I hammer the point too heavily. I should probably avoid the blanket statement though. I point out that the oldest alliance, GATO, is very democratic, and that radically democratic alliances like LSF are also fairly successful. But I point out that you need a membership that cares about it- if you just get a bunch of random newbs and say "ok we're a democracy" it's going to suck. EDIT: In the second section I've softened up the terms about democracy, saying that it can very well work, just that it often isn't well thought out.
  14. Alright, a rough first draft is done. Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R3Ol9nC51hn6yRVwNxdoIsM5YBE0cEJwiVVg1vwDrXw/edit?hl=en The interviews aren't complete yet, so some case studies are only introductions currently. Feel free to tee off on any of my cruddy research and otherwise terrible writing, but don't dump on me because I make your alliance look bad.
  15. First round of interviews are done (with NPO and LSF members), still need GPA, GATO, MCXA, and a Vox alumni. Currently it's about 1,500 words with ten citations, I'm looking to double that.
  16. I may split Democratic into Neutral and Warring, because I do want to examine at least one Neutral alliance- why people play neutral is a question many of us have, and it should be analyzed academically.
  17. Of course, I'm mostly looking for charter debates and other information. Why did you chose the government you did, basically EDIT: Here are the alliances I'm thinking of choosing as case studies: Case Study: New Pacific Order (Oligarchy) Case Study: Global Protection Agency (Democracy) Case Study: Multicolored Cross-X Alliance (Council) Case Study: Libertarian Socialist Federation (Unorthodox) Case Study: Vox Populi (Guerrilla Action/Propaganda Effort)
  18. [quote name='Delta1212' timestamp='1303022311' post='2691851'] I've spent the past three years as a Triumvir with 6 other people filling the remaining slots over the course of that time. I can say that while the dynamics you've described can and do occur, there are other options depending on the chemistry and experience of the group. At the OP, do you have a copy of the 3D Web? It gives a nice visual breakdown of political alignments and is especially good if you get a copy that has the full list of in-game alliances instead of just the top 80. I'm not sure that it would provide any usable information by itself, but it's certainly a good reference for contextualizing information. [/quote] I do not have the 3D Web. Sounds smexy.
  19. Yes, there will definitely be discussion of heterodox alliances, as part of this is how virtual worlds can form governments that do not or cannot exist in the real world.
  20. [quote name='Dochartaigh' timestamp='1303016332' post='2691819'] I would check out NPO and GATO. NPO for its Francoism style government and GATO for being the oldest democratically ran alliance in CN. Other things to consider is the fact that nuclear weapons are not a deterrent style weapon as in RL. For blocs, consider WUT/1V/UjP, Q, GUARD, BLEU, AZTEC, and of course PB/DH. Other blocs to consider are TPF's protectorate blocs and Ragnabloc (Ragnarok's protectorate bloc). [/quote] Will do. Blocs will largely be a contextual part of it, but I'll mention the balance between hegemony and opposition and what drives it and changes.
  21. [quote name='Emperor Marx' timestamp='1303014735' post='2691813'] Triumvirates almost always never work out. There is always one or two Triumvirs who call all the shots either because the remaining Triumvir(s) is incapable of debating with the other leaders or because they're too inactive to fulfill their role. And when you start consistently overruling the other Triumvirs you create internal strife which, when poorly handled, causes a lot more problems. That was my experience as a Triumvir in a nutshell, anyway. Edit: If you want me to write something more detailed for you I can do that, just don't expect it within the next few days since I'm pretty busy. [/quote] Detail would be nice, this isn't due for several weeks. I'm doing this early so people have time to gather their thoughts about the subject.
  22. Writing a midterm paper about CN governments.

  23. Hey guys! I'm in a Comparative Government class for community college, and the midterm paper coming up is about any topic in political theory relating to the class. Since this is a great way to talk about something interesting to me, I've decided to tackle the question: [b]How and why do players in virtual games form different governments, and how does the structure of these affect their function?[/b] Basically it'll be comparing some case study CN alliances, while also discussing things like treaties and blocs to help give depth to why people do what they do. What I'm hoping is to get some help from the community. Here's what I need to make this a proper, academic paper: 1. If you think your alliance, or an alliance you have been in, is a good example of a government type (democracy, triumvirate, dictatorship), please tell me what it is and I'll look into it. 2. If you think your alliance, or an alliance you have been in, is a [b]bad[/b] example of a government type, and one that failed more because of a bad structure (too many chiefs, one head who went AWOL, too much democracy) than the people involved, tell me. [b]Chat Logs[/b] If you have any non-classified chat logs that relate to these topics: *government formation *conflict resolution and treaty negotiation *interest articulation (figuring out what alliance members want) I'd like to see them. Please send them to my forum account or link them to me ingame at Isis IV of Eonica. [b]Announcements[/b] If you think any AA postings would help this paper, please direct me to them. Good, quotable and succinct rhetoric is good. [b]Visuals[/b] I'll be using a CN Map of alliances probably, but if you have other visuals like good war propaganda, charts, or other cool stuff, I'd love to put it into my paper and cite you. [b]Thanks in Advance[/b] I can't write a good paper without some cooperation from the community. I hope with your help this could be one of the better entries into CN analysis.
  24. The International is only second to wormholes in coolness, and their existence is suspect.
  25. I approve of this alliance immensely. I could easily give it ten internets.
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